"9 months to 1 year" to fix some shifting that occurred due to a retainer breaking during Covid turned into 3 years... and my smile still doesn't look right! I'd post a picture, but I'm honestly just too embarrassed about my smile still looks. My old orthodontist, just prior to moving to Ohio in 2019, had a horrendous mess to fix and did it all in 19 months. I was so happy with where I was at! Cosmetically, Dr. DeAngelo's task wasn't even a tenth as bad as what the first guy had to deal with.
I feel like he cheaps out the adhesive to attach the braces. I had brackets break off multiple times. I never has that happened even once with my old orthodontist. We also tried rubberbands, with minimal success for a variety of reasons, including my own inability to wear them during the day. I'm not sure why we went this route at all... here again, my California orthodontist fixed a giant mess without so much as a single rubberband. Maybe Dr. DeAngelo's techniques are just out of date? That's my guess, but I honestly don't know for sure.
I said it plain as day when we started treatment, and hinted at it a couple of times during treatment... when Dr. DeAngelo's methods were dragging on and on and on, I really wish he would have just called my old doctor to get my records and find out what worked so well there. Would that have been so hard? It would have saved us both a lot of time. I don't know why he was so resistant to doing that... hubris and pride I suppose? I have no other explanation for the resistance on doing that and I'm sure my old orthodontist would have been happy to talk with Dr. DeAngelo.
So here I am, three years later... my smile is still messed up, I am out thousands of dollars, I have new cavities to address due to my teeth being compromised with braces for so long, and now I get the added fun of hunting for a new orthodontist. Lucky me.
Dr. DeAngelo not only failed to get the job done with a very generous amount of time, but was also incapable of changing course or thinking outside the box (or picking up the phone) when his preferred method failed to get results. read more